ONE hoped that Tim Phillips, wandering the bowels of Melbourne Park with Andy Roddick’s runner’s-up prize from last year, was able to find the American before he was skittled from the Australian Open, because the thought of the Wimbledon chairman with the rim of a gleaming silver plate for an Eton collar is particularly unappealing.
It is not that Roddick took his fourth-round defeat by Marcos Baghdatis, of Cyprus, without calm reflection — indeed he played too much of the match in a similar mood — but to be greeted with “Hello Andy, look what I’ve got” as he padded the same corridors would have been like rubbing salt in the wounds of the No 2 seed, who found himself labelled again here as “The Only Man Who Can Stop Roger Federer”.
The fact is that, Wimbledon apart, Roddick has not got close to Federer in enough grand-slam tournaments to present any sort of threat. Yesterday, once more, the 23-year-old was shunted from an event long before he smelt the Swiss’s embrocation. For that, we have to marvel at the performance of Baghdatis, who reached his first significant quarter-final on a wave of adulation and audacity.
It was a measure of his approach that Baghdatis finished off a former world No 1 with a flurry of outrageous forehands, the tennis of the Cypriot backyard where he fell in love with the sport when his father, Christos, placed a racket in his hands and those of his two brothers and told them to go out and be themselves. He has not lost that zest for life, the exuberance, the sheer pleasure of making the ball move at his whim, that was too much for the bludgeon that is Roddick.
Baghdatis, 23, won 6-4, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4, rounding off the match with a love service game that Roddick had prepared to face muttering the words “OK, come on,” as he walked back from his chair. But the sweat had already formed large pools at his feet, obscuring his vision — the air-conditioning humming beneath the drawn roof of Rod Laver Arena was no artificial barrier against the 42C (108F) heat pummelling it from above and the fire raging inside his opponent.
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While most members of the young crop in the men’s game — Gaël Monfils, Richard Gasquet, Tomas Berdych, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray — failed to seize their chance, Baghdatis won two matches in straight sets and was not fazed when Radek Stepanek, the No 17 seed, recovered from losing the first two sets to bring their second-round match level. His manner is that of a supreme optimist and he is, as he remarks, in his own world, where he dances to the angels’ chords. There is something mystically serene about him.
It is all the more remarkable given that he has a band of followers who lent the Rod Laver Arena a football atmosphere. He admits to having had to drum the basics of tennis etiquette into them, a point Roddick noted. “I appreciate people who come out and support tennis,” he said. “They always stopped when I was about to serve. They were just supporting their guy. I totally respect that as a sports fan.”
Roddick had more trouble accepting he had lost, given that he felt he played well enough. But one wonders if his definition of “well enough” needs to be addressed. The American’s tempo barely rose above the pedestrian, he spent too much of the match in a submissive mood, one of tolerance of Baghdatis’s explosive power rather than flexing his biceps in response. He would not have been so apparently amazed that a world No
54 could fashion so many winners from his approach shots if he presented more of a threat at the net.
That mattered naught to those carousing in the fountains of Nicosia and Limassol. In Baghdatis, they have a new hero, one who does not seem the least daunted by the impact he is making. Will he stay the same? “Of course, I will never change,” he said. “The life may change me, that is natural, but nobody can make me change the way I am.”
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And, with a couple of sentences that ought to resonate with Murray as he landed back in Britain yesterday: “You do what you believe in and do it totally and those people who love you will always be there for you whatever happens. It is a very tough thing to be judged all the time but you have to take your decisions and go for it, 100 per cent.”
FULL MARCOS